I don't see why it could not be done. Just keep in mind, that you need a line-of-sight to connect, so if you want to connect between two satellites in different orbits, you have to make sure that they can see each other, or relay the signal through a third satellite that can see them both.

which type of WSN nodes are suitable for space applications?

I'm not an engineer and this falls far outside my area of expertise.

To be honest, I'm not sure if any of the existing nodes would work. Keep in mind, that distances are much larger than any on earth, requiring an increase in power, and that to work in space conditions requires special equipment anyway.

WSN communication can work for small distance which is not valid for satellite communication

WSN can be implemented in space environment but preliminary, analytical and/or critical designs especially as it concerns link budget and power are required for appropriation depending on mission, application, functions and orbit (LEO, MEO, GEO). For instance, while sensor nodes for constellation of satellites in LEO or MEO orbit will require exploiting omnidirectional antennas, directional antennas can be implemented for satellites in geostationary orbits within line of sight (LOS) allowance.

Existing WSN nodes built for operation on Earth could be not suitable for space applications: http://www.jhuapl.edu/techdigest/TD/td2801/Maurer.pdf

It is possible that design of some CubeSat's (for example, GATOSS http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/gomx-1.htm) could be interesting as examples of space WSN nodes: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262944047_ADS-B_in_Space_Decoder_Implementation_and_First_Results_from_the_GATOSS_Mission

Conference Paper ADS-B in space: Decoder implementation and first results fro...

if you want to collect data from a space environment then it is possible, mica z nodes might be suitable, duration of the application matters for its lifetime and to decide on battery power 

I mean it is not suitable for satellites on completely different orbits, but may be useful on some "flying configuration" that features not large satellite distances and free sight of line. This is not so rare in space - e.g. in magnetospheric space physics we need more spatial samples of the environmental physical entities, so quite frequently the main satellite and a small subsatellite are flying on the same orbit in not very large distance (e.g. project RKA - INTERBALL), or, e.g., four satellites are flying together in tetrahedron configuration (project. ESA - CLUSTER-2 ) 

Some food for thoughts:

N. Celandroni et al., "A survey of architectures and scenarios in satellite-based wireless sensor networks: system design aspects", International Journal of Satellite Communications and Networking

Volume 31, Issue 1, pages 1–38, January/February 2013

D.J. Barnhart, T. Vladimirova and M.N. Sweeting, “Satellite Miniaturization Techniques for Space Sensor Networks”, AIAA Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets, Vol. 46, No. 2, March – April 2009, pp. 469-472.

Dear Hafiz

Even than the main ideas of Wireless Sensor Network could be useful in many different fields as satellite communication. Mainly if satellites are developing some kind of sensing process and use wireless communication which seems that fits with the words of the Wireless Sensor Network term. The problem with the current WSN technology is that many of the principal WSN nodes implementation use Zigbee, WiFi or Bluetooth technologies and all of this technology are been classified as WPAN or WLAN (Personal or Local Area Network).

The higher range that a have ear about in Zigbee node area about 3 km using special antennas, in WSN the world record are some hundred of kilometers, and Bluetooth is about a hundred of meters. For this reasons I think that current commercial WSN motes could be difficult to use in satellite communication. Maybe you have to think on some different use of nodes or some special communication technology different from current commercial WSN node.

The range limitation comes from the fact that WSN are commonly composed of independent battery operated nodes, and to get a larger life time they have to reduce its communication range to spent less energy in communication.

I have not read the paper about satellite based WSN that Yannick le Mouliec talk about, it could be a good start point to deal with WSN and Satellites.

I hope that this information would be useful for you.

Ricardo Gonzalez

Using WSN in space, The limitations are : distance, LOS, Battery.

WSN's are self organised networks.works effectively in distributed network scenario.For satellite surveillance smart dust sensor nodes needs to throne in space.Distance energy and fault free data gathering  are major concerns.